Self-answering...the solution, of course, is to turn on focus mode, something I'd never heard of before today. Live and learn. :)

@sirhenrythe5th Yes we can certainly see that with all the annoying “no retropie for raspberry pi 4 yet” posts that happened.

There's a virtual keyboard on my end when using Netplay, no physical keyboard needed.

I guess first try updating to the latest Retropie version along with Retroarch as well.

solved, thank you.

@mitu Sorry for the late response!

There were indeed no events when I tested with evtest.

I completely removed the keyboard again, rebooted and started Pixel. I again paired the keyboard, and made sure it worked in Pixel. Then I rebooted into ES again, again no keyboard..... some kind of weird inspiration made me go to the Retropie Config (you know, where the setup.sh is started) and, much to my surprise, I found that after a few button pushes the keyboard started working! I have no idea what went on and why it worked, because apart from opening setup I did nothing differently from the first time. After leaving the config I started evtest again (via the remote console) and actually this time around the events were showing up! The keyboard actually started to work!

Soooo happy now, as after adding the proper event source to the moonlight config I actually have full keyboard support there as well!!!

Thank you again for your help and patience @mitu !

@philcomm First off, I'm sorry that your OSK as originally engineered looks like it won't be accepted --- but I wanted to thank you for really moving the ball forward on this, because it looks like the python-based one will make it through as per recent comments on the PR. This is going to save a lot of people time and frustration and you should get a large chunk of the credit.

For fun last week as I was setting up my Zero2W I connected via SSH to it and attempted to enter Wifi via my phone using the existing infrastructure by executing RetroPie-Setup directly. Although in theory this seemed like a good idea, the WiFi won't drop and reconnect to a new network when you're using that connection for the terminal session, turns out. So, still very clunky.

Will check out your music suggestion, and also the new OSK coming down the pike. Thanks so much.

I think I might have found some quirks around the safe shutdown script with the Zero2W around pin allocation and interaction with WiFi but I want to do some more testing this week before making further topics or inquiries about it here. I also will share some additional script suggestions / observations too.

@markyb2021 nope, i have 4 8BitDo Pads running very well and had no problems at all, not with retropie 2 x, nor with 3.x or 4.7.
It is your setup, but as you are not able to answer specific questions we will never know what is wrong with it.

@segasonic ...and we have a winner! Thank you very much!

@mitu : Thank you very much. After installing Joy2key, the navigation works again with the gamepad. Thanks for the good advice.

Please add some info about your setup, as detailed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

What emulator are you using to run ZX Spectrum games ?

Hey everyone, im having similar issues, ok so first this first im on rpi4 latest retropie 4.8.

This was the only close issue i could find.

The thing i am having is my gamepad and keyboard wont work when adding XINIT to yabasanshiro emulator.cfg i tested running retropie on desktop but gets hot so i than thought why not reverse it, now all games should be running from vulkan from my understanding and run great but notging works i have to reboot my pi from ssh.

Could this issue be the same for fullscreen or maybe i need to point my config to my key2map for yabasanshiro.

Thanks

@crush Thanks for the info, will get another PSU.

Nobody knows hot to help? Ah the above mentioned combo works with the italian layout which i sat in retroarch otions menu

OK, i worked it out. Please consider this help request closed.

For anyone else having the same issue: don't map the "Retroarch keyboard as joystick" to any of the four available ports in Amiberry's controls menu.

The keyboard then works as a keyboard. I find it counter intuitive, but hey! It works.

@bram279b What mitu said plus... you should just be able to swap joystick ports with the controller. It's built into the base mapping if you're using a SNES style controller.

If not, it should be your "A" button, whatever that is. That should toggle.

Try it with an easier game like Bruce Lee. Use the virtual keyboard as well as the controller to make sure you have it setup correctly.

The Virtual Keyboard in lr-vice64 also has a button to press to toggle joysticks,

For completeness, I've done some more work...
I checked fuse.rmp, it did not have the "-1" settings applied to anything.
Each game remap would have been created from the fuse.rmp (using the retroarch menus.)

I then checked all my game remap files. 13 of 28 files had this problem.

Next I tried to recreate using the retroarch controls menu.
Cycling right through the available options that can be mapped to the port 1 controls I have:

"---"
Up (1)
Fire (1)
Keyboard Overlay
Up (2)
Down
Left
Right
Fire (2)
Fire (3)
Enter
Space
Then back to "---"

The (1) etc are my addition, "Fire" appears 3 times, "up" twice.
I set some buttons to each of these values, wrote a game remap file and checked for "-1". None of these options generated the "-1".

Next I cleared the options on buttons A, L, L2, R, R2 & X (all originally set to differently) and bingo, I recreated the problem :

input_libretro_device_p1 = "257" input_libretro_device_p2 = "0" input_libretro_device_p3 = "259" input_libretro_device_p4 = "0" input_libretro_device_p5 = "0" input_player1_analog_dpad_mode = "1" input_player1_btn_a = "-1" input_player1_btn_l = "-1" input_player1_btn_l2 = "-1" input_player1_btn_r = "-1" input_player1_btn_r2 = "-1" input_player1_btn_x = "-1" input_player2_analog_dpad_mode = "0" input_player3_analog_dpad_mode = "0" input_player4_analog_dpad_mode = "0" input_player5_analog_dpad_mode = "0"

There appears to be a bug. When clearing a mapping using the retroarch "Controls/ port X Controls" menu from any value to "---" the resulting remap file contains "-1" for that key and this stops you mapping the button using the Retroarch "Options" menu.

I hope this helps repay the debt a little!

@ts-x Great idea on dropping in on him. I might just do that. I have a wired number pad that I tried to use plugged into the USB port on my Mayflash (which would also avoid two long wires), but that didn't work. It's not a real USB port apparently. However, it would also be seen as another input device.

This issue is NUTS and across the whole retro industry. Someone needs to do something. Every joystick should come with the ability to ID itself as unique. If say, 8bitdo suddenly started offering controllers that all could send out unique IDs it would be a SHORT wait for someone in Retroarch and others to jump in and support that. That manufacturer would sell a ton of product and force everyone else to adopt that option as it would be SO brain-dead obvious. How has this NOT happened yet???

@nitrohepcat So...
Situation A) Do you want left shoulder to be "2" and right shoulder to be "2"?
OR
Situation B) Do you want left shoulder to be "half of 2" and right shoulder to be "half of 2"?

I'm not sure you map a controller input to "half a keyboard key".

Then I have no idea. I routinely use a keyboard - without a hotkey set - and don't experience the behavior you're describing.